


Toward the Light

by thepurplewombat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adoption, Babies, Character Death, EVERYONE GETS A HEA, F/M, Fun with Timelines, Jealousy, Memory Loss, Multiple Universes, The Voice of God sounds vaguely Borg, Zombies, but happy ending, cw for traumatic birth experience, even the people who died, sad beginning, travel between worlds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 19:56:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16878222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat
Summary: With the world fallen to the infected, Hermione and Severus search desperately for a safe home for their unborn child. Turns out, the only safe place is in another universe entirely, through an arch that might lead to peaceful death or happy life, but they won't know until they try.Their decisions have a devastating on the life of Hermione Granger, returning seventh year student at Hogwarts, who just wants to get through one school year - just one! - without any drama. As you can imagine, Hermione does not get her wish.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Before the New Moon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10837023) by [IShouldBe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShouldBe/pseuds/IShouldBe). 
  * Inspired by [Zero Sum](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11976105) by [thepurplewombat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat). 



> So, this story is (very, very loosely) based on Ishouldbe's 'Before the New Moon' which is a fantastic story which you should all go read immediately. It is also, in a way, an AU of my own fic Zero Sum.
> 
> Beta thanks go to Havelocked, and also thanks to everyone on the Snape Discord who listened to me wail on while I was writing it (by hand, because why build power stations, right?) and flailing.

In the end, Hogwarts burned. It shouldn't have been a surprise, he supposed. The infected were drawn to magic and Hogwarts, with magic in every stone and pillar, with its wards fed on millenia of magical effort, was a feast like nothing else in the world.

And yet, every witch and wizard in Great Britain had grown up being told that there was no safer place for magical folk than the hallowed halls of Hogwarts. Even Severus, to his shame, had nearly fallen into that trap. If it hadn't been for Hermione and her obsessive preparation for every possible outcome, he would have been behind the walls when they were breached.

Instead, he stood on a distant hilltop, his crying wife's face pressed to his chest, and watched Hogwarts fall.

If ‘fall’ was the right word. The magical explosion was like nothing he'd ever seen before, strong enough that the ground trembled underfoot even as far away as he was. It could be only one thing - Dumbledore had imploded the wards. The last resort of wizardkind, when all hope was lost and a quick death was the best possible outcome.

By the time Hermione turned to see, the stones had already begun to settle and the multicoloured flames reached for the sky like sickly fingers.

They had been on the road for months now. Nearly a year, in fact. Seven months ago Hermione’s belly had begun to swell despite all their precautions, and Severus had finally admitted the terrible truth - magic itself was dying.

Their spells had become less and less effective over time until they were forced to rely almost entirely on primal magic - which drew the dead like flies. The infected were  _ feeding  _ on the ambient magic in the air itself, and soon it would be exhausted.

That was when Severus had turned them toward London. When Hermione had protested, not wanting to risk the city in her condition, he had explained.

In the bowels of the Ministry, he told her, in the deepest chambers of the Department of Mysteries, there was a room in which there stood an arch. Ancient beyond belief, the arch radiated pure, untainted magic. Some believed that it was the doorway to the world from which magical beings had first entered this one, but nobody had as yet been able to prove it. Nobody who had passed through the arch had ever returned.

“You’re talking about the Veil,” Hermione said, and he’d nodded.

“I don’t know where it goes,” he had confessed, clutching her hand tightly. “Dumbledore believed, and told Potter, that it was the veil between the world of the living and that of the dead. The Unspeakables, on the other hand, believed that the Arch is a doorway to another, living, world.”

He had watched as she looked around them. They had been hiding in an attic at that time, venturing out only to obtain food and masking their magic as best they could - not very well, as it turned out, and certainly not well enough. They had switched to Muggle clothes before they had even left Hogwarts - robes were simply too easy for the infected to grab hold of, and Severus had lost count of the number of times his life had been saved by his simple, close-fitting Muggle gear. Even Muggle clothing eventually wore out, however, and theirs had been starting to fray around the edges.

“Either way,” Hermione had said, “it’s better than this.”

Severus had nodded again. It wasn’t as though she were wrong - whether the Arch offered them a peaceful life or a quick and permanent death, it was better than scrabbling to survive as the last witch and wizard in a world overrun with starving infected.

The journey had been long. Long, and not easy. From the moment they had made their decision and left their attic hideaway, it seemed as though the infected were close upon their heels. They were hounded and hunted, night and day. They barely slept, and never both at once.

Sometimes, in his more paranoid moments, Severus wondered whether the infected somehow  _ knew _ that they were planning an escape, but that was ridiculous. The infected had no mind, no intelligence directing their actions. It was a matter of sensing mage-folk on the move, and hunting them, that was all.

Food had run low, and then it had run out. By the time they reached the emergency entrance to the Ministry, located at the outermost edge of the London Underground, they had been reduced to feeding off such ambient magic as remained. Risky as it was, they had even begun to use their primal magic more, generating ambient magic which they in turn fed off. It was reckless, dangerous, and ultimately unsustainable, but by the time they reached London they had been reduced to creatures of hope and not much else. 

They spent hours talking to the child in Hermione’s belly, feeding their unborn baby on every scrap of magic they could generate. Of its own accord, Hermione’s body began to create the wild famine magics of ancient times, stretching every thaum of magic it could gather to snapping point and routing every bit that could be spared to the child.

By the time they entered the Ministry, Hermione looked like a skeleton carrying a beach ball, and Severus was a wisp of a man, ragged clothes over taut-stretched skin and bones.

The Ministry was deserted.

Their footsteps echoed in the vast empty spaces even as their senses reached out and glutted themselves on what ambient magic remained in the massive underground structure. It wasn’t much, but it was more than they had had for months now, and soon they were moving with a touch more vigor.

It did not escape Severus how much their behaviour had begun to resemble that of the infected, but what were they to do? To even have the chance of passing through the Veil, first they had to  _ reach  _ it.

“I don’t trust this,” he murmured, assisting Hermione over a piece of fallen masonry. “The place should be filled with infected.”

It should have been  _ crawling  _ with the dead, packed with every witch and wizard who had been trapped in the Ministry when the nation’s anti-Apparition wards had come down like a guillotine. That the place appeared empty appeared to be a blessing, at first.

But Fate had ever been in the habit of kicking Severus Snape in the teeth, and this was no exception.

They could sense the infected long before they saw them. There must have been a hundred or more somewhere ahead of them, creating an aura of black nothingness that sucked at the soul, their eternal hunger radiating from them like a smell.

Severus caught Hermione’s concerned glance, and took a tighter grip on his machine gun - a gift from an American they had travelled with for a time. Severus had given the man mercy when he’d been bitten, and they had loaded up his gun collection and travelled on.

He could see the question in her eyes, and did not want to answer it.

As far as he could tell, the dead were in the Round Room, the last room before the Arch. Even now, he could feel hints of the Arch’s magic in the air.

There was no way to avoid a confrontation. Worse, these infected had been feeding for Merlin only knew how long off the magic radiated by the Arch. They would be as fast as fresh infected, and as strong.

He motioned Hermione to take up a position on the opposite side of the corridor from him, and they both checked their ammunition.

When Hermione nodded her readiness at him, Severus cast the most powerful Lumos he could manage.

All hell broke loose.

Here, he thought, was what remained of the Ministry of Magic, of the Aurors and Unspeakables and ministers and junior assistants who had made up the government of the Wizarding World before the Rising.

They poured out of the open door to the Round Room and into the corridor, a snapping, snarling mass of gaping mouths and staring eyes, and the last two magical beings in Britain stood in front of the hellish tide as their machine guns spat their hate at the dead.

The noise was deafening, and Severus knew that if there were any free infected left, the guns would bring them running, or shambling as the case may be, in their direction.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the last of the infected fell at Severus’ feet. Under the dirt and grime he could see thinning red hair, and knew that he had finally discovered the fate of Arthur Weasley, who had never made it home on the day of the Rising.

Hermione screamed.

Severus spun to face her, his gun up, and found that the corridor behind them was rapidly filling up with infected. One of whom had managed to get close enough to sink its filthy teeth into Hermione’s shoulder.

Severus didn’t hesitate - he put the bullet through the top of the thing’s head before he took a breath - and then it felt as though he might never breathe again.

Hermione didn’t allow him to think about what had just happened. She stepped forward, grabbed his hand, and hauled him through the corpse-strewn corrido and into the Round Room while he was still trying to absorb the horror of it.

Here, he could see the effects of the infected quite clearly. The illusions that created the spinning doors were gone, their magic drained, leaving the heavy stone doors exposed. The doors must have been hewn by hand because, unlike the magic-forged stone of Hogwarts and Diagon Alley, the doors had not decayed, not crumbled to dust. Severus could sense the magic of the Arch radiating through the doors, a beacon of pure magic like nothing he’d ever experienced.

The infected had clearly felt it too - that much was clear from the bloody handprints and gouges in the stone.

“They were trying to get in,” Hermione murmured, her voice ragged and hoarse.

“Yes,” he said simply, and stepped forward, supporting Hermione with an arm around her waist. He moved the door out of the way with a simple levitation spell - nothing that would infect the stone, nothing to draw the infected, he’d learned his lesson about  _ that _ , at least. As soon as they were through, he drew it back into place again, sealing them into the room. One way or another, they would not be leaving through that door.

There it was: the silent arch with its whispering shroud. They limped forward together, and Severus could sense the weariness in Hermione’s limbs that was the first sign of encroaching infection. The bite was vivid on her shoulder, bleeding sluggishly and soaking her shirt with her life’s blood.

Severus pulled the strongest Occlumency shields he could muster around himself, trying to keep his mind in one piece as he examined the bite that was going to cost Hermione her life.

“Severus,” she whispered, “You have to save the baby.”

The thought shattered his shields like glass. He whimpered and flinched back from her, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth to stop himself from screaming.

“No,” he muttered, shaking his head. “No, we’ll go together.”

“Our baby deserves a chance,” she said quietly.

That, he couldn’t argue with. The baby did not deserve to die.

They might not have planned for it, might not have expected it...but the universe had seen fit to create this tangible evidence of their love for each other. Evidence, if you will, that once they had lived, and found love.

They had a  _ responsibility _ to this life they had created together, to give it a chance no matter how minuscule.

Severus nodded.

“All right,” he breathed, and stroked her hair one last time. “Lie back, my love.”

He helped her lie back, semi-reclined against the broad stone stairs, and lifted up her shirt to expose the mound of her belly. He’d have liked to stun her for this, but stunning spells were always the first to stop working on the infected.

He did cast a pain spell, however, more powerful than anything he’d ever done, and one to slow her blood. He rather thought Sectumsempra would be the best option. Regardless of what that little savage Potter had made of it, Sectumsempra was a  _ precision instrument _ , intended for the most delicate, most surgical of cuts. The Dark Lord, twisted as  _ his  _ use of it had been, had at least understood what a tool it could be in the right hands. A scalpel, rather than a sword - ideal for what he would have to do now.

Severus cast the spell, and the taut-stretched skin of Hermione’s belly split under the touch of his wand like a ripe peach, laying bare her womb, where he could see their child moving. His hands were quick but careful, and under the force of his Occlusion, did not even shake. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he was able to split open her womb with the very lightest of touches.

He froze.

He could see her clearly now, through the spill of amniotic fluid as it drained. His daughter, her unborn limbs slender and long as she curled around herself, her hair a thick black mat, felted down with moisture.

“Hermione,” he whispered, his voice breaking under the force of his awe, “it’s a girl.”

Hermione gasped and closed her eyes for a moment. They had not dared cast spells to detect the gender - wasteful, when they had  _ survival  _ to think of, but they had both hoped for a little girl with her mother’s keen mind and her father’s dark eyes.

Severus reached into his wife’s body and lifted out their daughter, laying her on Hermione’s chest above the incision - and away from the blood from Hermione’s bite. His mending spells were quick and dirty, but as much as he didn’t want to leave her like this, gutted and broken, he didn’t have  _ time _ . The blood loss from the operation, slight as it was with his spell in place, had accelerated her change, and her eyes were already glazing over.

The moment he’d gotten her as fixed as she was ever going to be, he took the wailing baby girl and wrapped her in the only clean thing they possessed. They had pieced together the quilt from scraps and snatches of cloth, stolen from wherever they had been at the time and imbued with every scrap of love they could muster, as well as their memories. Such magic as remained to them had forced them to make it - a Memory Quilt, made in times of war for children who might be orphaned. It was a tradition older than memory, and in this case it had proved fortuitous, because he could not see himself surviving long without Hermione.

“Do you have a name for her?” he asked Hermione, who managed a weak smile.

“Miranda,” she whispered. “Miranda Rose Snape.”

Severus nodded and kissed little Miranda Rose. Then he leaned over and kissed Hermione. It was awkward, tear-wet and tasting of blood and pain and loss, but it was also the sweetest kiss of his life.

Finally, Hermione pushed weakly at his shoulder, pushing him away from her.

“Go,” she gasped, and grimaced in sudden pain as his spell wore off. “Go  _ now _ , Severus!”

Severus strode for the arch. As he was about to enter it, he turned back and cast the strongest stasis spell he’d ever managed. Just incase he managed to return to her someday. Stasis spells worked on the infected for a time - not forever, but then she wasn’t fully turned yet.

For a moment he hesitated. Dumbledore had been so sure...but then he remembered that the old man had wanted to send Hermione to Azkaban for mastering primal magic. Dumbledore was not always right.

He held Miranda close to his chest, pressing her wailing face over his heart, and stepped through the Veil.

It was both exactly like, and nothing like he’d imagined.

The vast grey nothingness, fading seamlessly into a sea of stars, he’d more or less expected. Ditto for the voices.

He had not, however, expected the voices to actually  _ talk  _ to him.

“You cannot travel,” the voices said. There seemed to be a million of them, speaking in unison and somehow coming from both right beside him and an unimaginable distance away. “You are infected.”

Severus froze.

“Infected? No, I-” but then he remembered the kiss, and the taste of blood in his mouth. Helplessly, he held Miranda out to the voices. “What about my daughter?”

“She is not infected,” the voices said. “She may travel.”

Severus took a moment to breathe, to let his relief flow through him.

“Can I… can I travel to a place where she may be safe, and then return?” he asked. “I only want her to live.”

“You cannot travel,” the voices said implacably.

“Please, I… I just want my child to live. Isn’t there something you can do?” Severus wasn’t sure which was worse - that he was talking to voices in the air, or that he was  _ begging them _ for the life of his daughter.

“You cannot travel,” the voices said, and Severus’ shoulders slumped as his hope left him. “We can travel,” they continued, and Severus jerked his head up to look around, a wild hope igniting in his chest. “We will find someone to care for the child. You will stay here.”

“Will you bring them here?” he asked, almost afraid to hope, and desperately wanting just another moment with Miranda before he gave her up.

“Yes,” the voices said. “You will wait. You will not attempt to travel. If you attempt to travel, you will be destroyed.”

There was no sound of movement, but there was a sudden sense of  _ absence _ , as whatever the voices were turned its attention away from him. He had no idea how long he stood there, on ground he could not see, breathing air he could not smell, and trying to soothe his baby daughter, who was rightfully upset with not having been fed yet.

As it turned out, she quieted when he sang, staring up at his face with newborn wonder.

“We have returned,” the voices said, and Severus looked up. His jaw dropped.

The voices had most definitely found someone to care for Miranda.

He just hadn’t expected it to be  _ her _ .


	2. Chapter 2

 

Hermione was trying to eat her dinner - Yorkshire pudding with a generous helping of gut-churning jealousy - and trying to keep her annoyance at a low simmer instead of allowing it to erupt all over everyone in the vicinity. Everyone, but most especially the most esteemed Headmaster of Hogwarts. Potions Master. War Hero. Spy. And apparently, total fucking manwhore.

And it wasn’t even as though she had a proper right to be jealous. A year of working together, becoming increasingly close and sharing secrets, and a single heated kiss on the eve of battle did not a relationship make. They’d made no promises, exchanged no vows.

Nevertheless. Nevertheless, her stupid heart had thought that all of that had  _ meant  _ something. Which was probably part of the problem, she thought as she stabbed her mashed potatoes viciously. Hermione had been thinking with her heart, while Snape was clearly thinking with a much lower part of his anatomy.

And she was about eighty percent certain that the Headmaster’s  _ big  _ head hadn’t had much to do with the hiring of the new DADA teacher either. Yes, Professor Jean-Marie du Bois had excellent credentials - ten years as a cursebreaker for Gringotts and twelve as a member of the Gendarmerie des Magique - but she was also tall, extravagantly curvy in the 50s pinup style, and had the most well-behaved blonde curls Hermione had ever seen. Certainly better than Hermione’s own unruly mop.

Fortunately, Hermione had an ally in the shape of Professor McGonagall, who had been with Hermione and Professor Snape nearly every step of their journey from teacher and student to something else. The Deputy Headmistress had a habit of fondling her wand as she watched the new DADA professor flirt with the Headmaster that Hermione found terribly endearing.

“Hermione,” Harry said, placing a cautious hand over hers. “I think it’s dead.”

She looked down at her plate. The Yorkshire pudding did indeed look thoroughly murdered.

“Sorry, Harry,” she said with a rueful smile. “I was just thinking about Professor du Bois.”

Harry glanced at the staff table. The blonde cow was laughing her tinkling little laugh which, frankly, reminded Hermione of Umbridge, with her hand on Snape’s sleeve.

“She’s not  _ that  _ bad,” he said, and Hermione fought the urge to stab him with her fork. She’d just gained a new appreciation for how  _ goddamn annoying  _ Harry and Ron must have found her constant defense of Snape over the years. The difference, of course, was that Hermione had been  _ right  _ about Snape (and had duly informed the boys of that fact, with the absolute minimum possible amount of gloating - although the minimum possible amount of gloating for having been right for  _ seven bloody years  _ was, in fact, still a great deal of gloating) while Harry was most definitely entirely wrong about the French hussy.

“I think I’m going to bed,” Hermione said, and started to stand.

She never made it.

Time seemed to freeze, and there was a terrible roaring sound, and the Great Hall disappeared. In its place there was...nothing. A vast grey nothingness that stretched out in every direction except above, where the grey blended seamlessly into a thick field of stars that sparkled against a black-velvet sky.

There was no sensation of movement, but as her eyes adjusted to the sudden dimness she could see a figure in the distance, coming closer at an incredible speed without, it seemed, moving at all.

When the world settled around her, she stared at the man in front of her. After a few moments she recognized Snape, but this ruin of a man was as far removed from the elegant Headmaster of Hogwarts as it was possible to be. Merciful Merlin, he hadn’t even looked this bad during the final year of the war!  _ Then,  _ he’d been half-starved, stress and fear robbing him of his appetite.  _ This  _ Snape wasn’t  _ half- _ starved, he was dancing on the raggedy edge of death by malnutrition. His long, unkempt hair was splashed with blood, and his stained and worn Muggle clothes were similarly adorned.

He was holding something to his chest. When it moved, and cried, Hermione realised that it was a baby.

The baby’s cry seemed to snap Snape out of his trance, and he blinked rapidly as he soothed the baby.

“Hermione,” he breathed, and there was such a depth of grief and longing and love in his voice that Hermione’s eyes pricked with tears.

“...Professor Snape?” she asked, but he was no longer looking at her.

Instead, he addressed the air.

“What is this?” he demanded. “You bring me a version of my wife before the Rising and expect gratitude? What chance is that for our daughter?”

Hermione didn’t have a moment to react to the words ‘wife’ and ‘daughter,’ let alone the two or three years she’d have needed to get used to it.

“She is not your wife,” said...the air, apparently, in a choir that seemed to come from quite close and really far away at the same time. “She is a version of her. She is not infected. Her world is not infected. She will take the child, and you will remain here.”

“Ex _ cuse _ me?!” Hermione squeaked, but neither the voices nor Snape was paying her any attention at all.

“I can’t stay here,” he was arguing. “You said I’m infected.”

“You are infected,” the voices said implacably. “You cannot travel. You will ascend. Your body will die. Your soul will ascend. Your soul is not infected.”

Snape paused, looking startled.

“I would prefer to return to my wife,” he said eventually.

“You cannot travel,” the voices said again, and Snape’s face crumbled. Hermione could have sworn that she saw actual tears in his eyes and...well, she didn’t know what was going on but it simply wasn’t in her to stand by and let him suffer, even though this wasn’t the Snape she knew. Maybe even  _ because  _ he wasn’t the Snape she knew.

“Can’t you fetch her?” she asked, and Snape’s head snapped around to face her. She felt a sense of attention from the voices which was more than a little disturbing. “I mean, you fetched me from Hogwarts, can’t you just...fetch her too?”

Snape’s face lit up, and the next moment a woman appeared beside him. If Snape looked half-starved, the woman looked half- _ dead _ , and the impression was not helped at all by the fact that her shirt was literally dripping blood. In the end it was her hair, a wild caramel cloud around her thin face, that made the lightbulb go off.

“Oh my God,” she breathed, and sat down abruptly as her legs gave way. “You’re  _ me _ .”

The other Hermione stared.

“Oh my God,” she said, and she’d have fallen too if Snape hadn’t wrapped his spare arm - the one not holding  _ their baby _ , Hermione wasn’t sure she was ever going to get over that - around her. “I can’t be here,” the other Hermione hissed. “I’m - Severus, I could turn at any moment!”

“You will not turn,” the voices said, and Hermione had the admittedly petty pleasure of seeing Snape’s wife jump a mile. “No time passes on the Paths. You will not turn. You will ascend, and join us.”

She turned wide eyes to Snape.

“I…”

“I’m not entirely sure I understand it myself,” Snape said. “The voices brought her here, and they want us to stay. They say I’m infected.”

The other Hermione’s eyes filled with tears, and she touched her fingertips to Snape’s mouth.

“I’m so sorry, love,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s not your fault,” Snape said in the gentlest voice Hermione had ever heard from him.

Hermione got to her feet and cleared her throat.

“Maybe now would be a good time to tell me what the hell is going on? Let’s start with ‘where am I’ and move on from there, yeah?”

“You are on the Path,” the voices said. “We brought you here.”

“Path to where?” Hermione asked.

“Anywhere. Anywhen. They are infected. They cannot travel. You are not infected. You can travel. The child is not infected. It can travel. You will take the child. You will return home. They will stay here. They will join us.”

Hermione nodded.

“Right, got that bit,” she muttered. “And what are you?”

“We are the beginning and the end. We are the One who is Legion. We are the Guardians. We watch over the Path between Worlds.”

“Basically, God,” the other Hermione said.

“We have been called that. We are not a god. We are the Guardians.”

“And if they stay,” Hermione gestured at Snape and his Hermione. 

“They will stay. They will ascend. They will leave their mortal forms behind. They will become Us.”

“Right,” Hermione said. “And this will stop the infection from spreading?”

“Yes.”

“What does the infection do?” she asked, not entirely sure that she really wanted to know.

“It makes zombies,” Snape said grimly, and Hermione shuddered. “Zombies that eat magic.”

“Where the infected flourish, magic dies,” the voices said, and there was a definite touch of grimness there. “Where magic dies, life dies. Your world is clean. There are no infected in your timeline.”

“And you’re sure that taking the baby back won’t endanger my timeline?”

“There are no infected in your timeline,” the voices repeated.

Hermione tugged at her hair, thinking. Obviously, she was going to take the baby, that wasn’t even a question. School would be tricky, but she’d manage and with her OoM award, she wouldn’t even have to work if she didn’t want to. And besides, the baby deserved a chance - this evidence that somewhere or somewhen there had been a Hermione whose Severus adored her.

“Right,” she said, and stepped closer to the couple.

Snape was cradling the baby as though it was the most precious of treasures, and Hermione felt like a monster as she held out her arms.

“Her name is Miranda Rose,” the other Hermione said tearfully as she touched the baby’s head with a shaking hand.

Snape tried to keep his face stoic as he helped Hermione settle little Miranda - god, she was so  _ tiny _ , she couldn’t be more than a few hours old at most - in her arms. Even though this wasn’t  _ her  _ Snape, though, Hermione knew enough about the nature of Snapes to know that he was dealing with some serious emotions.

When Hermione stepped back, her counterpart buried her face in Snape’s chest and sobbed as though her heart was breaking.

“I’ll tell her about you, I swear,” she said, her own eyes filling with tears as she kissed the baby’d head.

“And what do you know to tell, Miss Granger?” Snape asked, but his tone was only a little bit bitter, as though he didn’t have the emotional energy left to be properly scathing.

“I know you loved each other, and her,” Hermione said gently. “I know you did your best, and when it became necessary you loved her enough to give her up so she’d have a chance.”

Snape nodded, his expression softening, and the other Hermione managed a tearful smile.

“I’ll take the very best care of her,” Hermione whispered past the lump in her throat. “She’ll never want for anything, and she’ll never be alone or unloved or unwanted, I swear it.”

“I know you will,” the other Hermione said, and then the tears took her again and Snape held her even tighter, his own eyes shining with tears.

“It is time,” the voices said. “You will return.”

“Can’t I stay?” Hermione asked. “They shouldn’t be alone.”

“You may bear witness,” the voices decreed.

Movement drew Hermione’s eyes to the star-speckled sky and she took a quick step back as a swirl of stars seemed to detach themselves and drift down.

They came down in a waterfall, shimmering sparkles of energy that danced around Snape and his Hermione until they were hidden from view behind a curtain of light so dazzling that Hermione was almost forced to close her eyes.

She watched, through silent tears that filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, as the light separated into individual stars again and drifted up to the sky, leaving empty space where Snape and his wife had once stood.

“Come on, baby,” Hermione said, kissing Miranda Rose’s downy head again, “let’s go home.”

And when the nothingness around her began to face and the Great Hall began to come clear, Hermione was almost certain that there were two new voices in the chorus that whispered ‘thank you’ in her ear.


End file.
